He has served as Deputy Director for the Department of Energy’s Energy Efficient Buildings (EEB) Hub since 2011.

From 2004-2009, Dr. Atchley was Penn State’s Principal Investigator for the FAA/NASA/Transport Canada-sponsored Partnership for Air Transportation Noise and Emissions Reduction (PARTNER) Center of Excellence, led by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Dr. Atchley has conducted research in areas including shock formation in very high amplitude noise, measurements of noise from commercial aircraft and sub- and super-sonic military jets, acoustic propagation modeling, optical imaging of sound fields, ultrasonics, oscillatory boundary layer processes, and acoustic heat transport.

Dr. Atchley is Fellow and Past-President of the Acoustical Society of America, past member of the American Institute of Physics Governing Board Executive Committee, and currently serves on the American Society for Engineering Education’s Engineering Research Council Board of Directors.